Sink or Swim

by Bailey, Tessa

  Jiya did the same after she closed the door, her teeth snagging on her lower lip, her head ducking as if a little shy. How she could be anything but bold around Andrew knowing what she knew about his tastes was a mystery, but her demeanor was a B12 shot to his libido—as if it needed any encouragement.

  He roused himself and handed Jiya her coffee, taking her tote bag and setting it on the counter. Their staring match continued and his cock plumped in his sweatpants. It had taken all his willpower not to climb through her window last night, even just to hold her. Absorb her. Smell her neck. Anything.

  This time around, the pickup and drop off hadn’t led to Andrew getting stiches on his face, which was preferable to a hospital trip, but nothing about the situation was ideal. Especially Marcus riding shotgun like the bodyguard from hell.

  Last time he went to Jersey to do Handler’s dirty work, he’d been desolate. Devastated over Jiya’s engagement. He’d been laser focused on doing the job, protecting the people he loved, making it through the night. This time around, knowing Jiya loved him back, Andrew could admit to being scared last night. Scared there would be more guys. Another attack. Maybe a loaded gun next time. He didn’t want to be that scared again. He couldn’t risk his life anymore when it was worth living now.

  More than anything, Andrew wanted the freedom to sleep beside Jiya. To kiss her mouth every time she walked into the kitchen. Right now, he was walking on tightrope over a deep ravine and Jiya, his beautiful, perfect Jiya, was on the other side.

  “Good morning,” she said, voice husky and sweet. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  “Thanks for being here.” He almost groaned watching her take a sip of the dark brew. “You looked upset when you came out of your house. What’s up?”

  “Nothing.”

  He squinted at her.

  She sighed. “My mother isn’t exactly thrilled that I broke the engagement, so there’s a little tension in the house. It’s to be expected.” Her gaze went to the side. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Gut churning over the mention of her engagement, Andrew tipped her chin up. “Of course I’m going to worry about it.” He swallowed a fist-sized lump, his words emerging in a croak. “They really liked this guy for you, huh?”

  Jiya set down her coffee and twined their fingers together. “I would have spent my whole life loving you from afar and never being able to have you. You think avoiding that heartache was a sacrifice for me?” Andrew almost asked her to stop talking, her words made him so unsteady on his feet, but he couldn’t find the breath she’d stolen. “He was a nice person. Someone I could be friends with, but—”

  “No.” He carried the small of her wrist to his mouth and bared his teeth there. “Telling you not to being friends with him makes me a bastard. Hell, I’m not even able to make you my own promises yet. But I wouldn’t handle it well, Jiya. I’d lose it.” He kissed her wrist, her knuckles and fingers. “Maybe I don’t have the right to be jealous yet, but I’m always sick with it where you’re concerned. You’re mine.”

  “Yes, I am. And you’re mine.”

  The pace of his heartbeat tripled. “Until the day I die, Jiya.”

  Her eyes closed for a moment. “I like the ways you’re selfish with me, Andrew. Because you’re selfless in the ways that matter to me.”

  “How is that?”

  She cocked her head, studying him closely. “You get nervous when I fly, don’t you?”

  “I feel like my insides are being ripped apart,” he said truthfully, without hesitating.

  A surprised laugh puffed out of her. “And yet, you paid for my lessons. You braved expressway traffic to get me there on time. You smiled when it was over and told me I should keep going. You encouraged me to do something that scares you.”

  “It would be criminal to hide you away, sweetheart.” He lessened the gap between them, burying his nose in the hair above her ear. “You’re the fucking sun.”

  Jiya’s breath caught. “You’re the one who helps keep me in the sky.”

  “Oh my God.” His mouth latched onto hers in a hard kiss, his senses exploding at the taste of her. “How am I not fucking you senseless right now?”

  “I don’t know,” she laughed against his mouth. “It’s your rule not mine.”

  Andrew’s frustrated groan came from deep down in his belly.

  Appearing to have mercy on him, Jiya pushed away and skirted around the table, putting the piece of furniture between them. As if that made Andrew want to drag her down to the floor and shred her clothes off any less. “The pickup went well last night?”

  Andrew opened his mouth to answer, but Marcus strode into the room and beat him to it. “Went amazing, thanks to these.” He flexed his biceps. “Still waiting on a thank you, A.”

  “You made me drive an hour out of our way to find a twenty-four-hour GNC, asshole,” Andrew shot back. “And it wasn’t even open when we got there.”

  Jamie entered the kitchen with a smile on his face. “Ah, the soothing sounds of the Prince family kitchen. Good morning, everyone.”

  Marcus pulled out his husband’s chair and started massaging his shoulders once he was seated. “Jamie, your brother has no appreciation for the intimidating presence I provided last night.”

  Jamie was already reading the newspaper. “Appreciate him, Andrew,” he drawled.

  Andrew scoffed. “He slept through the whole transaction.”

  “Exactly,” Marcus said, massaging Jamie’s ears now. “Even asleep, I’m intimidating.”

  Andrew caught Jiya giggling into her hand and couldn’t stop his own smile. “What are you laughing at, huh?” He advanced around the table and caught her in a bear hug, digging his fingertips into her ribs until she squealed. “You think there’s something funny about him snoring so loud in the passenger seat I couldn’t hear the radio on the way there?”

  “Yes,” she gasped.

  “I don’t snore.” Marcus was the picture of outraged. “Do I snore, Jamie?”

  “Like a bear with a fucking cold.” Without looking up, he patted Marcus’s hand which was now resting on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, we still get to be married.”

  Marcus visibly relaxed. “I wasn’t worried.”

  The whole conversation was taking place behind Andrew, but he was barely paying attention because Jiya was still in his arms, but he’d stopped tickling her. Now she was pulled back against his chest and he was rocking them side to side, his nose and mouth moving in her hair. Her sexy backside was close to being tucked into his lap, hovering just an inch away, and it was the purest torture. Thankfully, Rory carried a sleepy-looking Olive into the kitchen over his shoulder a moment later and snapped the moment in half before Andrew could do something he’d promised not to do.

  Jiya cleared her throat and wiggled away, ignoring Andrew’s growl. “Good morning.” She crossed to the coffee pot, the goosebumps on her neck telling Andrew she was well aware he prowled after her. “Want some coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” Olive yawned.

  Rory sat down and carefully arranged his bed-headed girlfriend in his lap, propping her against his shoulder and looking at her lovingly. “One cup would be great, Jiya. We’ll share.”

  “I have spaghetti arms in the morning,” Olive said, rubbing her eyes. “Leads to a lot of spills and subsequent stains.”

  Andrew poured and doctored his brother’s coffee before Jiya had the chance, leading to her hip bumping him at the counter. He winked back. And God, at this moment, he could taste happiness. It was right there in his grasp. There were no secrets left between him and Jiya. She loved him, despite them all. She was still there. Still in his kitchen, smiling at him. What the hell had he done to deserve even a single moment like this?

  “So everything went okay last night?” Rory asked.

  Andrew turned to find his youngest brother watching him anxiously. Rory was a born protector and he didn’t like being left out, whether it was necessary or not. “Yeah, there were only two guys ther
e this time to hand over the keys.” Andrew nodded at Marcus. “I woke up Sleeping Beauty over here and he followed me back.”

  “I spent some time on the internet last night, piecing together Handler’s past cases and starting a rough timeline,” Jamie said, pushing aside his newspaper. “I’m not sure if it’ll help, but it definitely can’t hurt. We should know who we’re up against.”

  Olive sat up straighter. “Has he ever been under investigation by internal affairs?”

  “Here she goes,” Rory said, smiling into his coffee. “My little brainiac.”

  “That would definitely give us a place to start digging for dirt on him. Unfortunately, that information probably wouldn’t be online.”

  Something was tugging at Andrew’s subconscious and Jiya was the first to notice. She laid a hand on his arm “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, it just makes no sense that our father built this relationship with a cop. He hated cops. It doesn’t fit. I keep thinking Handler used the situation with my mother to blackmail our father so he’d let Handler use the Castle Gate as a drop spot. But that doesn’t really track, either. Our dad was an unapologetic asshole. He didn’t give a damn about his reputation.”

  Jiya’s brows pulled together. “You think Handler had something else on your father?”

  Andrew shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah. And if that’s the case…”

  “Dad would have had something on him,” Jamie finished. “Some kind of collateral. He never would have made a deal without it.”

  “You’re right. That guy loved gloating about the dirt he collected on every customer in the bar. It would have been a point of pride for him to have an ace in the hole on a cop.”

  “But what?” Olive asked.

  Jiya inhaled. “Jamie, did any of Handler’s cases involve the Castle Gate?”

  Andrew’s middle brother stared into space, as if performing mental math. “No, but I’ve only got the final year of our father’s life outlined so far.”

  Olive and Jiya already had their phones out. A handful of minutes passed in silence while the brothers traded looks across the kitchen. “Oh my God,” Jiya held up her phone, then brought it back down in front of her to read out loud from the screen. “July 2011 there was an alleged shooting at the Castle Gate. Nearby residents reported gunfire.” Her fingers tapped the screen a few times. “This is literally just an archived police blotter. I can’t find anything else about it.”

  “Me either,” Olive said. “Not even when I search the address.”

  Marcus dropped into a chair beside Jamie. “Too bad you don’t have cameras in the bar.”

  Andrew’s pulse spiked. “We don’t. But our father did.”

  *

  Andrew couldn’t skip another day at the beach, but concentrating on assigning chairs and settling squabbles among the lifeguards was no easy task. He wanted to be at the Castle Gate, searching his father’s old boxes for old camera footage. It was a long shot to say the least, but he’d meant what he said. Their father didn’t back down from anyone, especially cops. If he’d been forced to make a deal with Handler, there was a good reason.

  They just needed to find out what it was.

  The day moved by at a snail’s pace. There were a couple of drunk and disorderlies on the beach and one teenager who ventured into a no swim zone, so by four o’clock, Andrew couldn’t change fast enough and get to the Castle Gate. He bribed the daytime bartender to stay an extra hour and went down to the basement, stopping at the base of the stairs to regard the long-ignored stacks of boxes left over from his father’s days at the bar’s helm.

  Guilt prodded him in the side. A vision of his father’s surprised face caught him off guard, frozen in a flash lightning. His old man would hate knowing Andrew was about to invade his privacy like this, especially after what he’d done. Andrew could practically feel the undercurrents of loathing right now, reaching across the basement and wrapping around his neck. Thus he couldn’t have been more grateful when he heard two sets of footsteps coming down the stairs. They belonged to his brothers. He didn’t have to turn around to know it.

  “Let’s do this,” Rory said, clapping Andrew on the shoulder.

  It took them twenty minutes.

  Each brother had gone through two boxes when Jamie found the DVD, July 2011 written on the reflective silver surface in Sharpie. They all but tripped over each other to get upstairs to the office. “Thank God I never upgraded this laptop,” Andrew muttered, opening the CD player on the side, loading the disc and tapping it back closed.

  “I’m almost scared to watch this,” Jamie said.

  “Likewise, man.” Rory blew out a breath. “But I’m even more scared that it’s nothing.”

  “It’s got to be something,” Andrew said. “I need it to be something.”

  With both of his brothers’ hands on his shoulders, Andrew clicked on the folder icon and a grainy, soundless video came up on the screen. The scene was a snapshot straight out of Andrew’s memory. The Castle Gate dining room from another lifetime. Half-lit neon beer signs, mismatched furniture, fist-sized holes in the wall. All at once, the sight of it soured Andrew’s stomach and gave him a shot of pride over how far the establishment had come.

  There was nothing surprising about the footage. Based on the time stamp, it was well past midnight. Some drunk male tourists were having a laugh, beach bags abandoned at their feet. After about a minute or so, though, their smiles disappeared and one started jabbing the air with his finger, bringing his friend up and out of his seat. They dove for each other across the table, knocking it on its side.

  That’s when their father entered the frame.

  Andrew hissed a breath. God, he’d never forget those bitter lines around his father’s mouth or the rolled up sleeves that showed off a faded, low-quality New York Jets tattoo. But he’d forgotten the impact the whole package of his father had on him. The discomfort and fear and resentment he incited. Those fists, the ones he had balled at his sides, had been weapons that Andrew never managed to duck in time. Or help his mother avoid completely. The man himself had been a weapon.

  Now, Andrew’s father watched the fight taking place in his bar with an air of amused boredom. He tried to break it up once by dragging one tourist off the other, but they went back to throwing blows and their father eventually pulled out a cell phone, dialing and pressing it to his ear. Andrew knew from experience that law enforcement tended to keep close tabs on the boardwalk, so he wasn’t surprised when a cop walked into the bar within minutes.

  He was definitely familiar.

  “Handler,” Andrew breathed, sitting back. “There he is.”

  The fighting tourists were growing fatigued, one sitting on the ground holding the hem of his shirt to his bleeding nose, the other pacing around with a limp, but they were still mouthing off. One of them must have said something particularly offensive, because the man on the ground lunged to his feet. Handler stepped in between them before they could converge, holding them apart by the necks of their shirts.

  Their father started to step in to keep the idiots apart—but before he could, one of them pulled something black out of his back pocket. What happened next was instantaneous. The man lifted the black object between the man and Handler.

  Handler drew his gun and fired a bullet into the man’s midsection.

  The man who’d been shot dropped the object he’d been holding and it fell silently to the ground in plain view of the camera.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jamie said.

  “It was a cell phone,” Rory muttered. “He shot the guy over a cell phone—”

  Handler paced away, ripping his free hand through his hair.

  And then he turned and fired a single shot at the second tourist, who dropped like a stone and didn’t move again.

  Andrew jerked back, his brain struggling to play catch up. “Oh my God.”

  The Prince brothers watched in silence for long moments as their father and Handler locked the door the Castle Gat
e and engaged in a heated discussion. Finally, after about ten minutes had passed, Andrew’s father started to clean up the scene, eventually dragging the lifeless bodies out of the frame. The screen went dark.

  “Part of me wishes I’d never seen that,” Jamie said, pacing around the desk with his hands stacked on top of his head. “They were just a couple of drunk kids.”

  Rory stared silently at the closed office door leading to the dining room. “Yeah. That could have easily been me,” he muttered thickly. “God knows I’ve been in enough senseless bar fights in my life.”

  “No one deserves to get killed over something like that,” Andrew said quietly, his mouth dry as dust. “Dad helped him cover it up. I have to assume Handler threatened him with the same health code violations and bullshit citations he used on me.”

  “Maybe,” Jamie said. “But the public knowledge that a double murder happened in the bar would have been bad enough. It would have killed what little business he had left.”

  Rory and Andrew made a sound of agreement.

  “Look, what happened was awful.” Rory pointed at the laptop. “But the video is useful, whether we like it or not.”

  “Nah. He still knows about what I did,” Andrew said, shaking his head.

  Rory scoffed. “He has receipts and a suspicion, A. You have a cop on video shooting a guy for pulling out a cell phone. Hiding bodies and evidence. This is a totally different league.”

  “He’s right,” Jamie said. “The means of getting free of this aren’t ideal, but the alternative is living in the shadow of our father forever.”

  “What about the families of those guys?” Andrew pushed to his feet and crossed the room. “They just never find out what happened to them?”

  “Nothing is fair about this,” Rory said, stopping in front of Andrew and gripping his shoulder, shaking him a little. “But what’s done is done. We can’t change it. We’ve got one play to make now and we’re going to make it.”